VOLA Unveil Stunning Animated Video For New Track ‘Alien Shivers’

Copenhagen quartet VOLA have released a stunning animated video for their new track Alien Shivers, taken from their upcoming album Applause Of A Distant Crowd which is out on October 12th via Mascot Records/Mascot Label Group. 

The video was created by bassist Nicolai Mogensen and Anne Nørkjær Bang. About the process of creating this video they say:

“We’ve been looking much forward to sharing this video for the track “Alien Shivers” with you. It’s made by just the two of us and almost entirely by hand, so it is indeed a very personal project. We are both happy amateurs in the field of animation, but we’ve put a lot of hours, effort and love into this video, which we hope will shine through!  

For this video we worked on our self-build multi-plane animation stand, a wooden structure holding four layers of glass, allowing us to create a sense of depth in the images. We used the same stand for the video for the song “Emily” from Inmazes (2015), but this time we’ve upgraded our setup with a horizontal camera mount and the animation software Dragonframe, which has been a great help, making it possible for us to actually see roughly what we were doing, while we were doing it. 

 The video is a stop motion-film consisting of thousands​ ​of still images shown in high speed. Every frame is build up on our animation stand with handmade cutouts and different materials that we found, outdoors and in our kitchen mostly, giving shape to the landscape. For the earth we used coffee, the sand is sugar and the forest is made out of leaves that we dried and pressed in heavy, old books and moss from a nearby park. The water is painted on a transparent material called “cells” with a mix of dish washing soap and dark blue oil paint. We liked the combination of “real” and “faked” objects and effects, which we think gives the video a mysterious vibe with everything looking slightly unreal, surreal or out of place.  

The storyline of the video is loosely inspired by a short story by the argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges called “The Circular Ruins” (1940) in which a mysterious, anonymous man set himself on a task to dream a human being and make it come to life. We think it somehow relates quite well to the lyrics Asger created for the song, even though we did not intend to make a video that “explains” or picturize the lyrics in any way. Another great inspiration is Yuri Norsteins beautiful film “Tale of Tales” (1979), which sparked our fascination for stop motion animation in the first place.”

The album title is a metaphor derived from our relationship with social media, how we can appear close but be miles apart. Mygind elaborates: “We spend a lot of time trying to present ourselves in a flattering light in the pursuit of continuous applause, even if it’s a distant applause from those you may not connect with away from the screens.”
 
On this record, they embraced a different approach, the guitars have less gain, the drums sound dirtier and more alive, and everything feels looser. The contrast between the mellow and heavy is more profound than on any of their previous releases. 

VOLA also go on tour in November supporting UK prog band Monuments. 

Fri Nov 2nd – Bar 42, Worthing
Sat Nov 3rd – Damnation Festival, Leeds
Sun Nov 4th – The Globe, Cardiff
Mon Nov 5th – G2, Glasgow
Tues Nov 6th – Foundry, Belfast
Wed Nov 7th – Voodoo Lounge, Dublin
Thurs Nov 8th – Factory, Manchester
Fri Nov 9th – The Dome, London
Sun Nov 11th – Macmillan Festival, Bristol